I have a confession to make. On Sunday I slept for 14 hours, had ice cream for breakfast and spent all day in my pajamas. Yep, even health coaches fall off track and have “bad” days. Fortunately, my good days far outnumber the bad, but every now and then I’ll experience a sudden downturn in my energy and mood. For me it’s usually due to a thyroid crash which often follows a period of stress or over-exertion.
Whatever the reason, how I respond to these off days makes all the difference.
In the past I’d usually react by throwing a pity party for myself which would devolve into some form of self-judgment or negative self-talk and a complete withdrawal from the people in my life. This would often go on for days at a time.
Now, having come to understand the powerful influence my thoughts have over how I feel, I choose positive self-talk over self-judgment and self-compassion over self-blame. I listen to my body with curiosity and make self-care a priority. If this means resting and unplugging for a while, so be it.
I also try to focus on all the things I have to be grateful for and all the things that are going right in my life instead of all the things that aren’t. And this will often inspire me to reach out to someone else who’s having a bad day and help them in some way, creating an upward momentum of positive energy rather than a downward spiral of despair.
By making these simple, although not always easy (they require practice), mindset shifts I begin to feel better and get back on track a lot sooner. By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed that ice cream, without the guilt, which made it all the more satisfying. Now of course I’m not suggesting you start your days with ice cream, far from it, but when you do succumb to your cravings, don’t beat yourself up. Rather get curious about why you’re having the cravings in the first place.
In my case, my body was suffering an energy crisis and needed fuel ASAP, so I honoured that. Sometimes, however, the craving has nothing to do with hunger. It may very well be that your craving for sweetness is an attempt to fill an emotional void, hence the term “emotional eating”. (And I admit, there may have been some of that going on for me as well when I ate that ice cream.) We are looking for comfort, and sugary foods give us that. But they don’t actually fill the void, they just take your attention away from it for a while.
What if there was another way to fill that void…..one that didn’t involve junk food, guilt and weight gain?
One of the tools I use in my coaching practice is a nourishment menu. This is something I develop with my clients as an alternative to emotional eating. And it’s different for each client. What it does is provide them with an opportunity to think about the choice they are about to make…..eating their go-to comfort food or choosing something on their nourishment menu instead.
This brings awareness to the decision being made so that it is no longer a default behaviour pattern. It becomes a conscious choice which they can get curious about. And I find curiosity to be far more productive when it comes to habit change than self-judgment. Beating ourselves up for making a certain choice only makes us feel worse whereas curiosity gets us closer to the truth which will set us free from our conditioned behaviour.
“The truth discovered is far more powerful than the truth told.”
I can’t remember where I heard this phrase but it really resonated with me and I’ve adopted it as one of the paradigms of my coaching practice.
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